Girls In Tech

Before I head off to New Orleans to ring in the new year, I wanted to bring your attention to some highly effective non-profits that are doing AMAZING work and changing lives of women and children in the US and around the world.  Happy giving and happy new year to everyone!!

Kiva is the first website and online platform to connect lenders and borrowers for micro-finance loans. 82% of Kiva’s loans go to female entrepreneurs.

Samasource was part of the fbFund REV social incubator class of 2009 and uses crowdsourcing to bring dignified, computer-based work to women, youth and refugees living in poverty.

International Justice Mission works to rescue  and assist victims of slavery, sexual exploitation  and other forms of violent oppression.

Tags: International Justice Mission, Kiva, Samasource, Tina Tran
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We’re really excited to share some of our confirmed speakers with you for the upcoming Girls in Tech Catalyst Conference. We’re anticipating an amazing roster of the top women leaders within the tech industry as well as a variety of influential and inspirational professionals attending the conference.

The Catalyst Conference, presented by Girls in Tech catalyzes the career development of women working in high-tech. By offering high-level keynotes and discussions from successful women at the top of their game alongside workshops led by experts in innovation and collaboration, the Catalyst Conference enables & propels women to take the next step, whether they’re launching a venture, making waves in the corporate world, looking to join an innovative startup, or building their online and digital-media media brand. Our 2010 theme is “Curiosity,” which we believe is essential for inspiration, innovation and driving change.

Catalyst Conference Agenda

Catalyst Conference Speakers

Jennifer Fonstad; Managing Director, Draper Fisher Jurvetson

Jennifer Fonstad is a Managing Director of DFJ. Considered one of the most senior women in venture today, Ms. Fonstad invests broadly in early stage companies. Recent investment successes include Athenahealth (NASDAQ: ATHN), Lumenos (acquired by Wellpoint, NYSE: WLP), and NetZero (NASDAQ: UNTD). In addition, Jennifer sits on the investment committees for DFJ VinaCapital, DFJ’s partner fund in Vietnam, DFJ Tamir Fishman, DFJ’s partner fund in Israel, DFJ Frontier, and serves as adviser to the DFJ China team. She began her career with Bain and Company after spending a year teaching math to high school students in sub-Sahara Africa. She is a graduate of Georgetown University and the Harvard Business School . Jennifer is married with four children.

Jeanette Gibson; Director, New Media, Corporate Communications, Cisco Systems, Inc.

Jeanette Gibson leads Cisco’s New Media Communications group where she is responsible for extending Cisco’s leadership and innovation with new media and overseeing the vision and direction of Cisco’s award winning online newsroom, News@Cisco (http://newsroom.cisco.com). In her role as head of new media strategy, Gibson is responsible for developing and communicating the direction of Cisco’s corporate blogging (http://blogs.cisco.com), multimedia (video, podcasts, video podcasts) and social networking initiatives and driving its web strategy for communications websites, News@Cisco, Investor Relations and Analyst Relations Websites. Prior to working with the News@Cisco team, Gibson ran the Corporate Technology PR team at Cisco where she was responsible for promoting Cisco’s technology vision and strategy and securing top-tier business press for Cisco and its senior executive team. Gibson is a founding member of the Social Media Business Council (www.socialmedia.org) and member of the Society for New Communications Research. News@Cisco has received numerous awards for its excellence in online communications and was named #1 website for serving media by the Financial Times-Bowen Craggs 2009 global index of corporate websites. Gibson holds a B.A. in Communications from the University of California at Santa Barbara.

Maha Ibrahim; General Partner, Canaan Partners

Maha Ibrahim is a technology trend spotter with deep operational experience. She joined Canaan in March of 2000 and focuses on digital media, networking and wireless investments. Maha has won numerous industry awards and is frequently invited to speak at digital media conferences. Maha holds a B.A. in Economics and an M.A. in Organizational Behavior from Stanford University and a Ph.D. in Economics from MIT. She currently sits on the boards of eBillme, MiNO Wireless, SenSage , Virsto and Watercooler. Maha is an active member of the MIT/Stanford Venture Lab.

Leila Chirayath Janah; Founder, Samasource

Leila Chirayath Janah is the founder of Samasource, a social business that connects women, youth, and refugees living in poverty to microwork — small, computer-based tasks that build skills and generate life-changing income. Samasource was a winner in the International Business in Development Challenge in 2007 and the Stanford Social Enterprise Challenge in 2008, and is a current grantee of the Rockefeller Foundation. In recognition of her work with Samasource, she received the Rainer Arnhold Fellowship and has been invited to serve as a Social Enterprise Institute Fellow. Prior to Samasource, Janah was a founding Director of Incentives for Global Health, an organization formed by Professors Thomas Pogge and Aidan Hollis and advised by Nobel Prize-winning economist Amartya Sen to develop new financing mechanisms for pharmaceutical R&D on diseases of the poor. She has served as a Visiting Scholar with the Stanford Program on Global Justice and a Visiting Researcher at Australian National University’s Center for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics. Leila received her BA from Harvard University in 2005, where she led the Harvard International Development Group and published work on the Rwandan genocide.

Tags: Adriana Gascoigne, Canaan Partners, Catalyst Conference, Cisco Systems, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, girls in tech, Jeanette Gibson, Jennifer Fonstad, Leila Chirayath Janah, Maha Ibrahim, Samasource
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Samasource will host the first annual GiveWork Charity Gala at the University Club of San Francisco, bringing together writers, luminaries, and some of the most influential female entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley.  The event will feature a live auction, with items for bid including a conversation with Nobel Prize laureates George Akerlof and Myron Scholes, a secret challenge with “The 4-Hour Workweek” author Tim Ferriss, and a date with Bollywood actress Vida Samadzai (Miss Afghanistan 2003).

The gala aims to raise funds for Samasource, a non-profit social enterprise that creates computer-based work for women, youth, and refugees living in developing countries.  Samasource provides technical training, then connects workers with clients, like Stanford University Libraries and Bookshare.org, who need to outsource data jobs.  The core concept behind the program is what is called “microwork.” Samasource founder and CEO Leila Chirayath Janah says, “these little bits of labor that can be performed anytime and anywhere can add up to a real livelihood for people in many parts of the world. The driving force behind Samasource is knowing that hard-working people in places like refugee camps in Kenya and women in rural Pakistan can get life-changing work opportunities through the internet.”

The gala’s silent auction, which hopes to raise enough funds to create work programs in two new refugee camps, will be designed Auctionomics, the auction-design firm created by Stanford Professor Paul Milgrom, the world’s most recognized expert in auction theory. Gala co-organizer Silvia Console Battilana, an Auctionomics co-founder, met Janah at the unveiling of the Her Code Report which was released by Orange Labs earlier this year. That study showed that fewer than 9% of Silicon Valley companies have a female board director, and only 3% of venture-funded companies are run by women.  Janah presented the topic of microwork at the conference, and Console Battilana was immediately impressed. “I saw an opportunity to address several challenges at once – poverty, education, and female empowerment,” she says.

With that in mind, the gala will also bring together many of the Bay Area’s leading female entrepreneurs. The event has garnered support from women such as Adriana Gascoigne of Girls in Tech, Women 2.0 CEO Shaherose Charania, and Randi Zuckerberg of Facebook, with whom Samasource has recently partnered. “It’s great that the work Samasource is doing on Facebook Platform is also giving all these opportunities to people in some of the world’s poorest places” Zuckerberg says. Samasource has developed a platform that allows application developers to outsource the testing of their products to workers in Africa and Asia.

Janah is scheduled to speak at the November 21^st meeting of TEDx in San Francisco, an independently organized offshoot of the international TED conference.  The large overlap in attendees between the two events has given the GiveWork Gala the distinction of being the “unofficial pre-party” for TEDx.  Tickets for the GiveWork Gala go on sale on October 1. Visit www.samasource.org/gala for more information.

Tags: crowdsourcing, Fundraiser, Gala, girls in tech, Microwork, Samasource
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I was recently introduced to the non-profit organization, CARE, by a friend CEO of WITI, David Leighton. After reading through the organization’s site and learning more about their upcoming Global Action Forum, I was inspired to write a blog entry and promote such an amazing movement.  As citizens of the world, it is our responsibility to help create solutions to end poverty in developing countries. With the technology and innovation that surrounds our daily lives, there is no reason why we can’t continue to create platforms to get resources to those who need it the most. Thanks to RoomtoRead, Kiva, Samasource, Extraordinaries for serving as great examples for this social entrepreneurship movement.

This movement is underway to inspire people across the United States to take action against global poverty. On Sunday, September 13, at the Power to the Peaceful Global Action Forum & Celebration in San Francisco, you can learn from local and international social change advocates about how you can make substantive difference on behalf of the world’s poor.

Founded by singer, activist, and CARE Ambassador Michael Franti, Power to the Peaceful is an organization dedicated to the promotion of cultural coexistence, nonviolence and environmental sustainability through the arts and music. Cohosted by Power to the Peaceful and CARE, the Global Action Forum & Celebration will feature representatives from CARE, Back to Earth, the Office of Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Potentia Foundation, Room to Read, Spark, UC Berkeley, Vitamin Angels, and others in conversation about critical issues including global climate change, girls’ empowerment, and hunger and food security. Each session will examine challenges and solutions, and participants will leave with tangible strategies to affect change at home and around the world. Special guests include artists, dancers and musicians.

The Forum will close with a reception and celebration featuring an acoustic concert by Michael Franti and friends, a presentation of the Stay Human award to a celebrated humanitarian, and much more.

To purchase tickets, please click here.

Tags: CARE, End Poverty, Extraordinaries, girls in tech, Global Action Forum, Kiva, Room to Read, Samasource, women in tech
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